A stunt track and farting game are said to be this year's must have toys but what can we learn from the toys children played with in Argentina during the Cold War and from Beatrix Potter's anger at the production of cuddly German Peter Rabbits? And why is the idea of toys coming to life both endearing and terrifying? Matthew Sweet is joined by Jordana Blejmar, Miranda Corcoran, Filippo Yacob and Nadia Cohen. Jordana Blejmar is Lecturer in Visual Media & Cultural Studies at Liverpool Universi...
Nov 26, 2021•45 min
Left unfinished at his death in 2011, the poet worked on his version of the Illiad for over 40 years. As a new audio book of Christopher Logue reading War Music is released, Shahidha Bari and her guests, the writers Marina Warner and Tariq Ali, and Logue's widow, the historian Rosemary Hill, examine the work. Rosemary Hill describes Logue as writing "poems to be read to jazz accompaniment, to be set to music and to be printed on posters. He wanted poetry to be part of everybody’s life." In War M...
Nov 24, 2021•45 min
The Fall of Ceaușescu in 1989 ended 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. How did the experience of living through that make its way into fiction? Georgina Harding published In Another Europe: A Journey To Romania in 1990 and followed that with a novel The Painter of Silence, set in Romania of the 1950s. Mircea Cărtărescu was born in 1956 and has published novels, poems and essays. In the novel Nostalgia published in 1989, he looks at communist Bucharist in the 80's, in a dreamlike narrative se...
Nov 23, 2021•45 min
A rainbow monument in Warsaw which has now been destroyed. The response of residents in Belfast to an exhibition commemorating the Somme and the Easter Rising. Dr Martin Zebracki works on the Queer Memorials project which looks at memorials in Amsterdam, Warsaw and New York. Professor Keith Lilley is a geographer who has worked on a series of mapping projects linked to the anniversary of the First World War. New Generation Thinker and researcher of suffragette history, Dr Naomi Paxton, hosts the...
Nov 19, 2021•26 min
The dining room at Windsor Castle holds one of Grinling Gibbons's carvings, others are found at churches including St Paul's Cathedral and the sculptor developed a kind of signature including peapods in many of his works. As an exhibition at Compton Verney explores his career: Matthew Sweet is joined by the curator Hannah Phillip, the artist and film-maker Alison Jackson who is known for working with lookalike performers. We also hear from artist Lucy McKenzie who has over 80 works on show at Ta...
Nov 19, 2021•45 min
Vietnam, ecological worries and poverty and suffering inspired the lyrics in Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On. Written as a song cycle from the point of view of a war Vet returning home, it was inspired in part by the letters he was receiving from his brother from Vietnam and from his own questions following the 1965 Watts riots. The Nu Civilization Orchestra is performing their version of the album at the London Jazz Festival tomorrow. Matthew Sweet is joined by jazz journalist Kevin Le...
Nov 17, 2021•44 min
Kick-starting second-wave feminism with her 1949 book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir was a key member of the Parisian circle of Existentialists alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Her philosophical influences include Descartes and Bergson, phenomenology via Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, the assessment of society put forward by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and ideas about idealism from Immanuel Kant and GWF Hegel. Shahidha Bari and her guests consider...
Nov 16, 2021•45 min
Deciphering Dickens's shorthand, how the National Health Service uses graphic art to convey messages, creating a comic strip from Greek myths: these are some of the events taking place at the annual Being Human Festival in which universities around the UK introduce their research in a series of public talks, walks, workshops and performances. Laurence Scott meets some of those taking part and discusses different ways of recording and presenting information from comics to coded notebooks, to a sc...
Nov 11, 2021•44 min
Melting perma-frost in Alaska has led to crooked housing, an eroded air-strip and changes to the hunting and fishing diets of the inhabitants. But are their views and experiences being properly registered in our discussions about climate change? Today's conversation looks at the idea of climate justice. Des Fitzgerald is talking about community based research with: Dr Tahrat Shahid - the Challenge Leader for Food Systems, and cross-portfolio Gender Advisor at the Global Challenges Research Fund,...
Nov 10, 2021•26 min
Cold, civil, world, uprising, conflict, war on terror: Anne McElvoy and her guests Elif Shafak, Christina Lamb, Lincoln Jopp and Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe conflict. The Imperial War Museum has just revamped its "Second World War" galleries with changed dates and a wider focus and Cold War history is being rewritten in the light of current politics. So this year's Remembrance discussion asks how does language affect attitudes to war? Elif Shafak's latest no...
Nov 09, 2021•45 min
Eliminating plastic from building houses, creating a house out of construction waste – rubble, chalk, ply timber and second hand nuts and bolts – and designing for circular cities are amongst the projects undertaken by Duncan Baker-Brown from the University of Brighton. Professor Flora Samuel from the University of Reading has been looking at the value of good architecture and how we can measure the social impact of sustainable housing. They talk to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. You can find out...
Nov 08, 2021•27 min
Modern theology often treats God as an abstract principle: a mover that doesn't move. But in the Bible, Abraham walks alongside him, Jacob (arguably) spends a night wrestling with him, Moses talks with him face to face, Ezekiel sees him sitting on a throne, and Amos sees him standing in his temple. Jesus is declared the son of God, and declares in turn that he has sat alongside God at his right hand. Biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou joins Matthew Sweet to discuss the embodied divine and...
Nov 05, 2021•44 min
How can zines and board games help us understand climate change? Projects in Birmingham and Glasgow are using these techniques to allow young people to express their hopes and their experiences of activism. Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold and Simeon Shtebunaev talk to Rosamund Barraclough about why we should listen to and include the thoughts of young people. Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is Senior Lecturer in Children’s Literature Studies at the University of Glasgow. More information on zine-making wo...
Nov 05, 2021•26 min
Is district heating, not boilers, the answer to lowering our energy use? How should we think of decommissioned factories? Professor Frank Trentmann and Dr Ben Anderson explain the concept of district heating and how cities need to adapt to be more sustainable. Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, where he is the principal investigator of the Material Cultures of Energy project. You can find more information at: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/mce/about/ Dr Ben Anderso...
Nov 04, 2021•27 min
Caesars with the wrong beard, faint laurels in the background of a scene from Hogarth's A Rake's Progress and the experiences of the guardian of empty tombs, part of a ruined Neolithic necropolis in the Sharjah desert in the United Arab Emirates: Rana Mitter and his guests discuss the ghosts of history and depictions of power in art. Classicist Mary Beard has traced the collecting of images of Caesar over centuries in her latest book. Ali Cherri's artwork, born out of his experiences growing up ...
Nov 03, 2021•45 min
A concrete diving suited figure apparently swimming into the gallery floor is one of the sculptures created by Tania Kovats for her current exhibition. Margo Neale Ngawagurrawa has curated the Songlines exhibition of Aborginal art and the importance of their landscape. Huhana Smith works on the Te Waituhi a Nuku project which looks at Māori Coastal Ecosystems and Economies and climate change. Michael Falk researches the poetry of Papua New Guinea, including Reluctant Flame by John Kaisapwalova, ...
Nov 02, 2021•45 min
Are states policing themselves properly? How is the law helping put the CITES agreement into practice to stem the international trade of wild animals and plants? Professor Elizabeth Kirk and Professor Tanya Wyatt discuss the pros and cons of international law as a tool and how it is hard to keep treaties up to date with changing environmental conditions. Des Fitzgerald hosts the conversation. Professor Elizabeth Kirk is Global Chair of Global Governance and Ecological Justice and Director of the...
Nov 01, 2021•26 min
As the clocks go back, theoretical physicist Fay Dowker, philosopher Nikk Effingham and science fiction writer Una McCormack join Matthew Sweet get to grips with the weirdness of time travel. Fay Dowker is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. Una McCormack's latest book is The Autobiography of Mr Spock. Nikk Effingham is Reader of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham and author of Time Travel: Possibility and Improbability Producer: Torquil MacLeod Radio 3 is broadc...
Oct 29, 2021•45 min
Would it help to see Superheroes do their recycling? Do viewers feel more invested in climate protests depending on what the protesters look like? And how does bingeing box sets contribute to emissions and a bigger carbon footprint? Pietari Kaapa explains how blockbusters might be able to have a bigger impact than documentaries about the climate emergency, and Sylvia Hayes describes the changes in news images of climate change protest influence audiences. Sylvia Hayes is a postgraduate researche...
Oct 28, 2021•27 min
Christienna Fryar speaks to the researchers uncovering classical music that has been left out of the canon – discovering the stories of three composers whose voices and stories have been marginalised and obscured over time, despite their profound influence on music: the 18th-century French polymath Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the Japanese trailblazer Kikuko Kanai and the prolific African-American composer Julia Perry. Christopher Dingle, a Professor of Music at the Royal Birming...
Oct 28, 2021•47 min
The government plans to plant 30,000 hectares of trees each year by 2025. But how practical is it and what would the real impact be? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to Dr Julie Urquhart of the University of Gloucestershire about why we need more information about carbon capture to help select the best places and the best tree species to plant. William Macalpine is based at Rothamsted – his project explores how cutting back and coppicing willows as a crop encourages a rapid growth cycle and re...
Oct 26, 2021•27 min
Photographing at nightfall, capturing the sense of light in classical music, the charged body of a black Jaguar in the Amazon: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough's guests poet Pascale Petit, photographer Jasper Goodall, literary expert Alexandra Harris and composer Sally Beamish discuss the way twilight has been reflected in their own work and that of writers and painters of the past. Pascale Petit's collection Fauverie draws on her experiences of watching wildlife at both ends of the day. Her most re...
Oct 26, 2021•45 min
How can we come up with ethical and equal solutions to the climate emergency, helping rural communities to develop, and learn from the experience of indigenous communities. Alison Mohr explains how food waste can be turned into energy, and how giving communities access to energy, football and cold drinks can create business opportunities and help people help themselves. Antonio Ioris shares his experience of working with indigenous communities in Brazil, how they are coping with impacts on their...
Oct 25, 2021•26 min
Child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education are amongst the topics explored in over 20 books by the author Buchi Emecheta. Born in 1944 in an Ibusa village, she lost her father aged eight, travelled to London and made a career as a writer whilst bringing up five children on her own, working by day and studying at night for a degree. Shahidha Bari is joined in the studio by her son Sylvester Onwordi, New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike, publisher Margaret Busby...
Oct 23, 2021•45 min
Gardening and George Orwell might not be the first pairing that comes to mind but he uses gardening metaphors in his writing and made many notes about the growth of vegetables and flowers he had planted. Rebecca Solnit discusses how this focus helps us understand his work and that of other writers interested in flowers. Shahidha Bari is also joined by Amy de la Haye, curator and author of 'Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion', Randy Malamud, whose study of cut flowers in culture is called 'Strange Br...
Oct 21, 2021•45 min
Emissions, reputation and shame: what does the history of climate conferences tell us about what to expect at COP26? Professor Paul Harris and Professor John Vogler look at whether there are different ways of approaching some of the key questions to ensure greater success in meeting targets. Why do emissions created in China for businesses based in Europe but using Chinese labour count against China’s pollution tally rather than the European businesses? Should there be a more joined up way of th...
Oct 21, 2021•27 min
Do we value the right ideas? Two concepts come in for close scrutiny in this edition of Free Thinking: Rationality and Tradition. So, what are they, how has our understanding of them changed over time and why do we seem to place such little emphasis on each in our contemporary world? Presenter Anne McElvoy will listening to the arguments as Steven Pinker makes the case for rationality and Tim Stanley for tradition. Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and auth...
Oct 20, 2021•45 min
How have we shaped the landscapes around us, and how have landscapes shaped us? From flooding in Cumbria to community groups in Staffordshire, how can understanding the history of a landscape help planners, council policy, and current residents? Do we need to rethink the way we archive information about changes to landscapes? Professor Neil Macdonald has explored the history of relationships with landscapes, whilst artist and scientist Nicole Manley is delving into hidden knowledge to discover w...
Oct 20, 2021•27 min
Who complained about Olivier's Othello? Stephen Bourne has been mining the archives to find out who raised questions about Laurence Olivier's blacked up performance in 1964. It's one of the stories he tells in his new book, which also includes memories of meeting performers including Carmen Munroe, Corinne Skinner-Carter and Elisabeth Welch. Nadine Deller hosts a podcast linked to the National Theatre's Black plays archive and she's particularly interested in women playwrights whose work deserve...
Oct 19, 2021•43 min
Should we consider nature economically, socially, spiritually or culturally? What is the financial worth of bees? And do whales value each other? Dr Rupert Read and Professor Steve Waters explore how humans value nature and how that can impact climate change, whether that’s setting a play in a nature reserve, or considering the fact that whales go on holiday. Dr Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and a climate and environmental campaigner. You c...
Oct 15, 2021•27 min
